I'm a Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, a writer here and there on this and that and strangely, one of the global experts on the metal scandium, one of the rare earths. An odd thing to be but someone does have to be such and in this flavour of our universe I am. I have written for The Times, Daily Telegraph, Express, Independent, City AM, Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer and online for the ASI, IEA, Social Affairs Unit, Spectator, The Guardian, The Register and Techcentralstation. I've also ghosted pieces for several UK politicians in many of the UK papers, including the Daily Sport.

In 2007, according to the labor economist Sylvia Allegretto, the six Walton family members on the Forbes 400 had a net worth equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans.

And given that he quotes us here at Forbes on the point, he’s almost certainly right.

The question is, what are we to make of this point? I think we all know what Mr. Goldberg wants us to make of it, it’s a telling indictment of American wealth inequality, the world’s going to the dogs and something must be done about rising inequality.

The Waltons are now collectively worth about $93 billion, according to Forbes.

Well, yes, but. Total US household wealth is in the $50 trillion (yes, trillion) to $70 trillion range. The range is depending on whether you want to take before the housing crash or in the middle of it. So the statement is that these Waltons have, between the family, 0.13% of US wealth. Which, for the people who inherited the world’s largest (well, certainly the country’s) and most successful retailer doesn’t sound like a particularly terrible concentration of wealth. It’s certainly less than John D Rockefeller had all by his lonesome when he was in his pomp.

But I think it’s possible that the comment is more revealing about Mr. Goldberg really, for as Felix Salmon points out, Mr. Goldberg himself has more wealth than the bottom 25% of Americans.

This sounds outrageous, until you stop for a second and take note of the fact that Jeffrey Goldberg, individually, has a net worth greater than the bottom 25% of all Americans.

In fact, given that I have equity in my home and no other debt than mortgage, I have, as is highly likely do all readers of these pages, more wealth than the bottom 25% of Americans added together. For as Felix points us to:

In 2009, roughly 1 in 4 (24.8%) of American households had zero or negative net worth, up from 18.6% in 2007, and 37.1% of households had net worth of less than $12,000, up from 30.0% in 2007.

Wealth is always more unequally distributed than income. By the way, it isn’t even true that all of those households with zero or negative wealth are what we would call poor either. It’s entirely possible to have no net assets while having a good income, even a high income. All you need to have is debts higher than your assets: something that will almost certainly be true of anyone with student debt and fresh out of college for example. Fresh out of grad school you might well have $100,000, $200,000 of debt, hey, possibly even from medical school you might be carrying $500,000. None of us are actually going to weep all that hard for you though, not you with that associates job at a Wall Street law firm on $100,000 or more, not a newly qualified doctor on hundreds of thousands a year.

I certainly don’t mean that all those with negative net household value are in that situation: there are an awful lot of people who are “properly” poor in the way that we all usually understand it.

But this comparison of wealth desn’t show us quite what Mr. Goldberg thinks it does. If you’ve no debts and have $10 in your pocket you have more wealth than 25% of Americans. More than that 25% of Americans have collectively that is.

That a family who have inherited the majority of one of the leading global retailers have more wealth than the bottom 30% of Americans, when compared with how high up the tree a single ten dollar bill gets you, is pretty much worthy of a heartfelt “Meh”.

Update 12/15. A Doctor writes to remind me that fresh out of medical school a doctor does not in fact earn good money. Indeed, the one who wrote to me earns $45,000 a year for after that graduation comes residency. It is only after residency that the money starts to flow. I was sloppy in the above: I knew that residency came first and that it was only after full qualification that high incomes are earned. It wouldn’t be unusual for a newly graduated doctor to be carrying $250,000 of debt (from medical school alone) and the interest on this could be another $100,000 through a three year residency (this accumulates but it is possible to defer it, payments do not have to be made during residency). Leading to that $500,000 or so total debt if, as with my correspondent, one was to become a neurosurgeon.

So I was at best sloppy and quite possibly wrong. Although, having looked it up, given that the starting salaries post residency for neurosurgeons seem to be around $400,000 I will admit to not being about to burst into tears over this.

It does raise two interesting points though. The first being that we can almost certainly put every single doctor in residency on our list of people with less than zero wealth. Those education debts are likely to swallow any assets they might have. But we don’t normally think of doctors in training as being poor really, one of the points I was making.

The other is that, well, it takes 7 years to get an MD (3 years pre-med at college, four years medical school), then 3 to 7 years residency. So someone might be 32 or so before actually earning the big bucks: and have a perhaps 25 year career after that? How does that change income inequality? When some people only earn for 30 odd years, others for 40 odd?

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I would say to Mr Goldberg … So what? Sam Walton had a great business idea, and through hard work and innovation, built it into a great company that employs hundreds of thousands. He earned his success, and earned the right to do with those earning what he wishes, including passing it on to his own children and grandchildren. Any and every one of the “bottom 30% of Americans” is free to try to succeed through hard work and innovation in the same way Sam did.

The entire idea of the “gap (ratio) between rich and poor” as a horrible thing is a canard promulgated by the left to advance Omananistic / Marxist economic policies, which work really well. Oh, wait … no, they DON’T!

I’d suggest to those that might be inclined to agree with Mr Goldberg to read Steve Forbes’ excellent book on capitalism to get a better understanding and education on America’s awesome and yes, moral capitalistic system and the lame argument about the rich vs poor gap.

Also, I’d add lastly (as the author does as well) that being “poor” in America is vastly different than being truly poor in a place like Somalia, Afghanistan, etc.

Great comment!! This is America and the Walmart story is capitalism at its finest. The author wants to whip and berate the Waltons because they are so wealthy. Well, they were fortunate enough to have been born to a very smart and enterprising man and good luck to all of them!!! All the high school drops outs and the young women who got pregnant before they got an education or a life skill, are reaping what they sowed. You provide for yourself first, then you create a life and not the other way around. Go Waltons!! Show the world how it only takes a good idea to succeed in America.

When the moment comes that honest capitalism has produced a country where people who have made a mistake like having a baby too early, or have had accident of some sort, and due to wealth concentration can not recover from their situation (working hours needed for recovery are greater than number of hours being awake), they are often in effect slaves for the rest of their lives.

So we have to allow slavery in law again.

Those very few who do recover from that kind of situations can be made good examples, and let live free life again, so that the slaves have something to believe in. So that they will still work for us.

@ Eric T – the system in its current state is in no way “balanced.” I as a hardworking middle class American, with 2 A.S. degrees, a B.S, and a veteran barely make a decent living. I have no political say or hand in matters beyond arm chair quarterbacking talking points from any said news channel. I have no inside stock information or money to make money.

I like many Americans, drive to work in a car that I owe money on – in order to pay for the car I just drove to work in, and put a roof over my families head. In a few years (about 2 hours after I actually pay the car off) – the car will break, and I will enter another debt for a new car.

To say I have the same power in terms of the course of country / economy & so on… is absolutely absurd and an outright lie, we all know it – some just don’t admit it, some try to hide it. You are trying to hide it.

Nobody really cares how wealthy the wealthy are. What people care about is how wealthy they are. If people are doing alright, then they do not care just how rich the Waltons are. The problem with the growing wealth of a few American is not that they own more than one third of all Americans combined, but that they got the wealthy by making other Americans poorer.

Consider how Gov. Romney became as wealthy as he is. Gov. Romney and his partners in Bain purchased a medical supply company called Dade International. Take the case of Gov. Mitt Romney. Prior to becoming governor of Massachusetts, he rain a private equity firm called Bain Capital. Bain Capital acquired a medical supply firm called Dade International for around 30 MUSD. Without going into too many details which are more plentiful in the NY Times article linked below, Bain withdrew 242 MUSD in profits from Dade, laid off 1,700 workers, and quadrupled its debt. Dade, and Gov. Romney made a fortune while the employees of Dade lost their jobs and income. About 17 people made out like bandits and 17 hundred lost everything.

They made huge profits by shutting down large portions of a corporation and laying off hundreds and thousands of people. These people, in most cases, never get a job as good as the one they had. Multiply this over thousands of companies and factories and you have what has happened to the United States as a whole, a few wealthy people have become even wealthier while large numbers of people have become poorer. This is the “redistribution of wealth” in practice, from the bottom to the top.

The Waltons situation is, in and of itself, meaningless but in the context of what is happening to a very large number of Americans, it is symbolic a much greater problem.

I’ve got nothing for Mitt Romney, and polling would show that neither does anyone else, really, but your point is still errant.

You said that most of those people never got another job as good as the one they had. I don’t know the details of Bain capital, and I don’t doubt that they might be evil, but look here- if I lose my job and am unable to find another one that is as good, does that not mean that the first employer was over-paying me?

If the company I work for becomes a buy-out target, and the buyer makes the company profitable by slashing costs (including many jobs), doesn’t that indicate that I and my fellow workers were not providing as much value as we were being compensated for?

No job is sustainable if I get paid more than I contribute in value. By definition, an employer only hires when the value they get from the employee (measured by a myriad of factors) is more than the value of what they are giving the employee. Similarly, I only take a job if the money I’m given for it is more valuable to me than the time I’m losing in doing the job.

Again, not defending Bain capital in particular here. They may have horribly mis-managed Dade International- I don’t know. My bigger point is that in general the fact that you had to lay people off doesn’t mean that you’re a stupid or evil manager- it is quite expected that a company might have a lot of dead weight and by laying off a few hundred, you are maximizing shareholder return, which is the obligation of anyone running a company.